In those days, it seemed that anyone who was not a class enemy could join the rebellion and thus become a rebel. The leadership of this organization was tightly in the hands of the extreme leftists.
The man also read a document issued by the State Council, approving the activities of the rebel faction as legal, and only asking the workers to take care of production. This statement was tantamount to recognizing as legal the unprecedented cultural revolution initiated by the ultra-leftists. I was astonished and bewildered that Premier Zhou Enlai would support the rebels. But on second thought, his call for workers to grasp production at least showed that the Premier’s mind was still very sensible and sober in that crazy situation. It was not until I was released from prison that I realized that the ultra-leftists had exerted significant pressure on the Premier. For a long time, they had been scheming to force Zhou Enlai to give up his post as Premier of the State Council. He took such measures only as a resourceful response and as a gesture of permanent loyalty to the Mao line. Only in this way was he able to survive the Cultural Revolution and thereby protect some old party cadres.
Within a few days after this surprise announcement, the guards delivered a copy of the Liberation Daily. It was compiled and distributed by the newly appointed rebels, and it declared in red headlines that after a long struggle, the Red Guards and the rebels had seized the leadership of the press and publishing sector on December 2, kicking off the smashing of the old municipal committee.
I read the news in detail and carefully, and realized that the final victory of the rebels was due to the fact that two senior cadres of the old municipal committee had been won over by the rebels to “fight back”. In a public rally, they revealed that the former municipal party secretary and the mayor of Shanghai were both traitors. Desperate to be reappointed by the rebels, and to show that they were staunch leftists, they slapped their former colleague, with whom they had worked for many years, to the endless applause of the Red Guards and the rebels in attendance. (The two senior leaders were Ma Tianshui and Xu Jingxian. Before Mao’s death and the crushing of the Gang of Four, they were the Shanghai agents of the Gang of Four. In 1982, they were both sentenced to long prison terms for following the Gang of Four, including participation in the persecution of others. (Ma Tianshui went crazy over this.)
I was very disappointed when the Municipal Committee was smashed by the rebels. Some of my original hopes were dashed because of this. My case may not be solved until after the reorganization of various departments of the city government, including the Public Security Bureau. Because the First Detention Center is under the jurisdiction of the Public Security Bureau. This process must take quite a long time. Especially when the new leadership body encounters open or hidden resistance, there will be more trouble. I also believe that if the new municipal committee is to revive itself and accomplish its tasks successfully, it will depend on the speedy assumption of power in the hands of the rebels in other major cities throughout China. From reports of criticism of senior leaders in many other cities, it appears that the Red Guards and the rebel faction have encountered much greater resistance there than in Shanghai.
In the spring of 1967, the Shanghai Liberation Daily published a report on Mao’s call for the PLA to support the left. One of the Maoist quotes presented there said, “The People’s Liberation Army is not only a military organization, but also a political organization.” From this argument, it seems clear that the Red Guards and the rebel faction can no longer rely on their own strength to seize power in other parts of China alone. Yet the PLA’s support for the left could not immediately meet their expected demands either, because there were many circumstances that indicated that between the Red Guards and the rebel faction, the PLA could not correctly distinguish between which organizations belonged to the ultra-left and which belonged to the faction of senior party cadres that the ultra-leftists wanted to defeat. For both indicated that they wanted to be loyal to the Maoist line. And many of the army generals were themselves administrative officials in their own regions at the time, such as Tibet and Xinjiang. They all stated that they were true leftists and pointed the army at the Red Guards and the rebels. Thus between the two factions, it caused brutal martial fighting and much bloodshed. Many regions and armies, for fear of making political mistakes, had to turn a blind eye and pretend to be deaf when the various factions claiming to be leftists attacked their arsenals. However, after the truth was clarified, it still shows that the leftist support in a large part of the country’s regions and armies played a role in helping the rebel groups seize power. The PLA’s pro-leftist seizure of power increased the prestige of the army and its marshal and defense minister Lin Biao. Newspapers carried numerous pictures of Lin Biao standing beside Mao and walking alongside him, which clearly informed his elevated status. He was called “the closest comrade of Chairman Mao, the Great Leader”, a reference that elevated Lin Biao’s position in the Party ahead of Zhou Enlai and second only to Mao Zedong. In the press photo, Premier Zhou walks behind Lin Biao in third place. With a thunderous move, Lin Biao purged the army generals who were likely to oppose him and installed his own cronies, in key and important positions. It was reported in the newspaper that among the senior generals of the old army, a group opposed to Mao was uncovered. At the same time, the names of a group of newly appointed key leaders in the navy, army, air force and logistics organizations were published. The press, controlled by the rebel faction, enthusiastically hailed Lin Biao’s victory in this reorganization of the army.
The Shanghai Red Guards and the rebel faction began to take over the city’s grassroots leadership structure. From the daily revelations in the newspapers, it was clear that they were not only fighting against the hard-core factions among the targets of the defeat, but also forming various sects within the rebel faction and fighting for official positions. There were martial fights in all districts of the city, and the heads of the organizations were often changing, so the whole Shanghai was still in turmoil. In the cells and playgrounds, various shouts could be heard from time to time from the road, and those speeches of denunciation and accusation coming out through the amplifiers could be heard clearly. I could see the horrible scenes of human beings killing each other as a result of this rampage. I was deeply worried about the safety of my daughter.
Instead of trying to control the riots and bloodshed, the rebel leaders seemed to be encouraging it. Once I read in a newspaper the headline, “It is honorable to have the blood of the enemy on our hands.” Another day, another headline was published: “To make a revolution there will always be sacrifices, and we should not exaggerate the seriousness of this situation. Many people have committed suicide, and many have been killed. But this number of deaths cannot be compared with the war of resistance against Japan, the war of liberation or even the time of natural disasters. Therefore we have gained much more than we have lost.” Such inhuman words made me sick with worry for the safety of my daughter. I could no longer sleep or eat.
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